


Precarious

by Museical



Series: 31 Ways [5]
Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-14 20:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5758678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Museical/pseuds/Museical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His loyalties are divided, but even so, in Zahir’s mind Vania burns hot and brilliant like the desert sun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Precarious

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a while since I wrote smaller pieces for fun, and when perusing old entries on LJ, this list sparked my interest.
> 
> Non Glake Prompt: Diagonal in my bed, from an old prompt list by scoured, 31 Ways to Leave Your Lover

Together, they sprawl across his bed and Zahir can feel her chest rise and fall against his. Vania’s hair spreads like dark silk over his arm; her lips, parted gently, barely graze the skin of his bare shoulder. 

She is beauty and danger all wrapped up in one person, even when she is asleep.

Zahir ghosts his fingers up the slope of her arm, slung possessively around his waist. The barest touch--he stills the movement. 

Perhaps it is the slight change between the limp fluidity of sleep, their legs tangled together under twisted sheets and the tenseness of full wakefulness that has Vania stirring beside him. Perhaps it is how Zahir shifts away when her eyelashes touch his shoulder like butterfly wings. 

The press of her lips trail up his neck, to the base of his jaw and Zahir’s head rolls back--away?--at the light kisses that burn on his skin. 

Soft under his hands, Zahir’s fingers run the length of Vania’s spine, through her dark hair until he feels the curve of her hip and pulls her close.

Vania tastes like the open sky itself, reminding him more with every kiss of the way the horizon cradles miles of sun and sand and wind under a blue-white hot heaven. 

The heat of desert sun smoothes over his skin even here inside these strange stone walls, and Zahir cannot forget. He is tied forever to golden sands, a voice for a people as restless as the wind itself; he feels their pulse beside his own. 

He cannot continue this.

He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, facing away from her.

The brush of her fingertips across the small of his back almost sends him reeling back into her arms.

Instead, he stands, yanking a white cotton shirt over his head and shoving it into the band of his breeches roughly.

“Zahir.”

He half turns. She is still draped across his bed. Her hazel eyes, with their startling new leaf green and walnut brown patterns, flick up the length of his body and Zahir wonders if Vania knows if she knows what she looks like, wide-eyed like that.

She bites her lip.

She knows. Zahir feels her hook lodged in the skin over his heart, tugging at him. He should be stumbling forwards, pitching over the line into her arms and sinking down under the waves of desire. 

“I can’t do this.” His voice is raspy and deep with sleep; he swallows and busies himself with his boots. 

“Zahir...”

She’s not pleading, not really; the note of his name on her tongue holds a tiny hint of a whine to make him think she is but the predatory curve of her lips tells another story.

Zahir’s jaw tightens. The curve of those lips as they trailed down the side of his neck...

“No, Vania.”

The door isn’t close enough that he can escape the room before he hears the sound of the sheets sliding off of her body.

**Author's Note:**

> Vania ended up seeming far more manipulative at first glance than I intended, which is slightly disappointing to me, since I didn’t intend that. I like seeing who she is behind that facade, which I think came about because she is the youngest Conte. Suffice it to say, I think that her actions play out because this is the last, subconscious attempt to keep what she wants in the only way she knows how.


End file.
